Now that we’re headed into the Bush recession, I hope everyone takes note of the 12 years of GOP congressional control and the six – plus years of GOP While House control and what that buys you in the way of a fucked up economy.

Bush’s legacy will be the utter destruction of America’s dominant position as a world leader in every way.

Two Sonics owners donated $1.1 million to an anti-gay hate group. If they have money for that, why should I pay taxes to build an arena for their private for-profit business? Taxing me so they can afford to contribute to political causes forces me to support those causes. That’s wrong!

If Renton’s city fathers wants to improve their downtown, they should start small and work up, beginning with enforcement of Renton’s panhandling laws — by arresting Clay Bennett!

I’m glad somebody is. This is a serious problem, and I support cracking down on copper wire thieves. The penalties should be much tougher, because the existing laws obviously aren’t deterring this thieves. Maybe a few more electrocutions will slow them down …

Goldberg’s at Factoria? I’ve only had the corned beef on rye, but I thought it was good enough to go back (and I live quite a drive away). The rye bread they make is pretty impressive – just the right chewy texture, with a slight crunch to the crust.

Directions for a Reuben or Rachel sandwich, made with corned beef or pastrami, along with Swiss cheese, rye bread, sauerkraut, and Thousand Island dressing.
INGREDIENTS:
rye bread
about 1/4 pound thinly sliced corned beef for each sandwich
Swiss cheese
sauerkraut
Russian salad dressing
PREPARATION:
Assemble ingredients on rye bread and grill on a lightly greased griddle until lightly browned and cheese is melted.
Rachel: Substitute pastrami for the corned beef and top with coleslaw instead of saurkraut.

When I’m hung over, nothing, and I mean nothing, beats Three Girls in Pike Place Market for a hot reuben. There is a local “New York-ish” type lunch place in Belltown. I tried they’re reuben, and is was soggy.

Will @ 19
You raise a most important topic–hangover food. Three Girls chili is also an outstanding antidote for a previous evening’s excess. A little sweat on the brow, spice on the tongue, and pretty soon all is forgotten, if not forgiven.

The truth is EXACTLY what I suspected all along — Mayor Nickels plans to stick suburban homeowners who DO NOT GET TO VOTE in the advisory election with the bulk of the costs for “tunnel lite.”

In today’s Seattle Times, Nickels is quoted as saying:

“Most of the City’s cost would be in relocating the utilities ($500M) like the City Light lines that now hang from the bottom of the Viaduct. That would cost the average ratepayer $5.50/month. $250M would come from downtown property owners who directly benefit.”

$5.50 a month. $66 a year. That’s what Mayor Nickels wants City Light customers to pay, in perpetuity, for his tunnel. Many of those customers are suburban homeowners and small business people who don’t get to vote in Seattle’s mayoral or city council elections, and weren’t invited to vote in the city’s advisory election on viaduct rebuild vs. tunnel.

What the result of that election is, it’s automatically invalid because a large percentage of the people who will actually pay for the tunnel WERE NOT ALLOWED TO VOTE.

This is exactly the kind of bullshit the public has become so fed up with: Expensive gilded public projects are foisted on us by people who stand to benefit financially from them at our expense — and they make sure we don’t get to vote. Last week, Sonics owner Clay Bennett told the Legislature he doesn’t want the taxpayers who will pay for his $500 millin playpen to be allowed to vote on it. See the pattern here? Nickels is playing the same bullshit game — stick the bill to suburbanites who don’t get to vote.

Taxation without representation. 225 years ago, when the English Parliament tried to pull a Seattle City Council on the colonies, they got a shipload of wet tea and an armed revolution for their trouble.

@4 “Now that we’re headed into the Bush recession, I hope everyone takes note of the 12 years of GOP congressional control and the six – plus years of GOP While House control and what that buys you in the way of a fucked up economy.”

Well let’s see … housing prices have doubled, gas and heating prices have tripled, food prices are way up … wages up not so much, defined-benefit pensions not up at all … if you ask me whether I’m better off than I was 12 years ago, the answer is a resounding NO. How can an ordinary, working-class shmuck like me possibly be better off after 12 years of rule by the Pickpocket Party, whose entire raison d’etre is stealing from others so they can live high without doing any work or taking any financial risks with their own money?

Sorry to be late to the party. I saw Senator Holmquist when I was in Olympia about the sex ed bill. She was distraught that the proposed supplementary teaching materials for 12 year olds included a vocabulary “bingo” game including the spelling for “penis”,”labia”, and “nocturnal emission”. So either she doesn’t approve of spelling or doesn’t like biology and physiology. Anyway, she struck me as pretty rabid.
Oh,yeah,and….. Goldberg’s deli in Factoria for the Reuben.

“When conservatives rail against ‘Activist judges legislating from the bench'; what they are really saying is that they don’t know or understand the legislative process since the judges are not proposing legislation of any kind, nor do they understand our system of Checks and Balances, since it is the prerogative/duties of the courts to rule on such matters when law suits meet the high standards of actual controversy and/or injury.

“So when conservatives preach the Activist Judges crap they either don’t understand the Constitution, or they DO understand the Constitution it’s just that they hate the concept of true Liberty.

“Either way, their actions undermine the Rule of Law and the fundamental principles our country was founded on and for which so many have died and sacrificed for!”

It’s not that simple. Some judges DO legislate from the bench, but nevertheless, that doesn’t account for all the yelling. Although some judges do suffer from the delusional that they possess congressional powers, the legitimate, scholarly, educated discourse over this problem has been drowned out by the shrill, mindless, shrieking of partisans with a political agenda to further who don’t know what they are talking about and have utterly garbled the debate of this topic. It’s analogous to the cacaphony of a rioting mob drowning out the Vienna Orchestra.

Let’s begin here: After you’ve practiced law for 30 years or so, you come to realize that many laws are born of practical necessity, and legal systems exist because human societies can’t function without them.

Laws are created in numerous ways. Sometimes courts and legislatures merely formalize community practices. The Uniform Commercial Code, for example, relies heavily on customary trade practices. Also, western water law was written with Winchester rifles, and courts and legislatures followed, adopting the rules that had been worked out with hot lead at the water holes.

The history of American law can be summed up like this: The early English colonists imported English laws and legal practices into the colonies, but because there also was significant French and Spanish colonization of the continent, some French and Spanish influences found their way into American law, too. Until the explosion of statutory law in the 20th century, most American legal cases were decided under “common law,” i.e., law defined by judges relying on both precedent and “reasoning” grounded in practical common sense.

(The University of Washington Law School has collections of early decisions all the way back to 1800, and I have gone into those old tomes to read 19-century opinions. Those cases are fun to read, because judges in the 1800s had time to think cases all the way through, and were much better writers than modern judges.)

Over the last 100 years, much of America’s common law has been replaced with legislative enactments, so that now statutory interpretations has supplanted judicial reasoning. And legislative bodies have not only been exceedingly prolific in writing laws, but also have displayed a passion for micromanagement. The result has been billions of words of statutory law, regulating everything down to how much dust there can be on a day care’s windowsill. This propensity of legislatures for pervasive intrusion into all facets of societal activity doesn’t leave much room for judicial creativity.

One area where legislatures have largely left lawmaking up to the courts, though, is in the area of tort law. Also, courts obviously call all the shots on questions of constitutionality and statutory interpretation.

It is in this area of statutory interpretation where judges find opportunities to get creative. Let’s be honest here, some liberal judges — motivated by a desire to solve social problems — did get “activist” and “creative” in ways that grated on some folks. Especially in the area of school desegregation and mandatory busing, which was a judicial brainwave in its entirety. This, alone, pissed off enough people to give birth to a substantial anti-judicial backlash.

How much latitude judges have to “make law” under our constitutional system is a philosophical question on which reasonable minds can differ. Liberals lean toward giving judges somewhat more latitude; reputable conservative thinkers argue that judges should leave lawmaking to the representatives elected by the people to perform that function. There is no bright-line demarcation between what constitutes the “liberal” or “conservative” view on this issue; rather, it is a continuum or a sliding scale, along which one places oneself at some point.

Then there is a whole gaggle of discrete issues out there that, strictly speaking, are not really part of the question of how much law-creation powers judges should have under our constitutional system — but are often confused with the latter. These include such topics as “natural law,” “strict constructionism,” and “jury nullification.”

The best known of these sub-issues is strict constructionism. There are two major camps, the “strict constructionists” who see the Constitution as fixed and immutable, whose meaning never changes, and which must be interpreted literally according to its word; and the camp that believes the Constitution is a “living document” whose meaning is flexible and changes over time to adapt to changing technologies and social conditions. The latter view has prevailed over the centuries, and is deeply embedded in our legal system; but the strict constructionist philosophy has enjoyed a resurgence in recent years in tandem with the rise of the conservative political movement.

As for the term “activist judges,” it has become one of those terms that is rendered meaningless by usage. It means whatever one wants it to mean. Rightwingers use the term to describe any judge who doesn’t share their fascist thinking. To me, the Supreme Court justices who intervened in the 2000 Florida recount and handed the presidency to George W. Bush were “activist judges” with all the negative connotations the term ascribes: Five Republicans who presumed to take the presidential election away from 100 million voters and decide it themselves. Conservatives have demonstrated many times that they are not against “activist judges” creating law out of thin air, when it’s the “law” they want — the kind of law that lets a president declare an American citizen an “enemy combatant” and imprison him indefinitely without charges, without evidence, without legal representation, without habeas corpus, without due process, without access to the courts — something that is as clearly unconstitutional as it is possible to get. Yet Republican activist judges declare it legal, the guy stays in jail, and conservatives cheer. And then they bitch about “activist liberal judges” if some judge think giant corporations shouldn’t be allowed to poison our drinking water, etc.

@22 “Tokyo experienced the first winter without snowfall on record since 1876, the Japan Meteorological Agency said Thursday.”

Of course, it’s completely lost on wingnut dickheads that global warming causes shifts in weather patterns, so it can be colder in some places and warmer in others. But overall, the planet on average is getting warmer.

What might be a better operating title for “global warming” would be “redistribution of water”. At present it seems a lot of it that’s been locked up in large glaciers is melting. Exactly where it’s going may not be quite as simple as one would think. For instance, for a variety of reasons southern California has been somewhat wetter over the last ten years than it was for the 20 or so years before that. (The last year, on the other hand, has seen a reversal of that trend.) If more of it winds up in the atmosphere as vapor, we’ll be seeing some pretty significant changes in weather patterns. Some places may indeed become significantly colder–and depending on where, that might be a real problem in and of itself. What if six feet of snow in New York City on Ground Hog Day becomes the norm? What if that starts happening in Miami?

The real point is that whatever we can do to reverse our production of greenhouse gases (and well we should), the system has been thrown into a state of change, and we’re going to have to dance pretty fast to be able to adapt.

Frankly, I don’t care who the owners of the Sonics donate money to, or whether they donate to anyone. This corporate giveaway is outrageous any way you cut it.

The new Sonics owners all seem to be Republicans and pretty conservative. I generally like Republicans. But since Republicans are decidedly in the minority in current state political affairs, maybe this ideological bias will be a not-so-good to so-so reason for defeating a horrible idea. (The good reason to defeat it is that government subsidized stadiums to benefit rich teams and players are a horrible idea.)

1997 — Democrat Governor Gary Locke got legislature to send Seahawks Stadium giveaway to referendum special election. State House was about 3-2 GOP and state Senate 25R-24D (or was it 26R-23D?). Paul Allen won referendum by dumping in nearly $10 million of his company’s funds to get people to narrowly approve it.

So there are idiots in both parties that support these kind of outrageous ideas. Neither stadium would have been approved if at least one of the political parties had stood up and resolutely opposed it.

Those folks in Boston weren’t the first to rise up against taxation without representation and other injustices. There was a popular rebellion in North Carolina in 1771 which was rather brutally suppressed. My great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather Benjamin Merrill was one of the leaders of that rebellion. He was hanged by the British on June 19, 1771, along with five others.

Wow PelletHead, that was pretty reasonable response on judicial activism even for a libtard like you. I had few problems until you went of the left deep end with that last paragraph.

Gore tried to pull a fast one and you know it. He didn’t try and recount all the counties. The activist SCOTUS judge ex_ACLUer Ginsburg really showed her TRUE colors. I wonder if she knew ol’ hyphen name, the child porn viewer? I posted the chronology yesterday. I guess it was tough reading for Pellethead!

Regarding Jose Padilla, that used to be called treason back in WWII, but we’ve gotten soooooooooft over the years.

@22 I agree with Kerry on this one. Swift Liar supporters are unfit to hold public office, and anyone who donated $50,000 to that group should not be a U.S. ambassador.

02/28/2007 at 6:41 pm

Of course who would think that. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are patriots and saved America from certain disaster. They may not have won in Vietnam, but the battle they did win in 2004 was of way more importance.

@22 “Tokyo experienced the first winter without snowfall on record since 1876, the Japan Meteorological Agency said Thursday.”

Of course, it’s completely lost on wingnut dickheads that global warming causes shifts in weather patterns, so it can be colder in some places and warmer in others. But overall, the planet on average is getting warmer.

02/28/2007 at 6:42 pm

Now only if you could explain global warming in 1876…God you lefties are dumbassess. heehehehe

@43 Even back in WW2, we didn’t have kangaroo courts, and people got trials before being hung for treason. Shrub doesn’t believe in due process, or much of anything else the Constitution requires of presidents. That’s why he should be impeached.

@43 (continued) I don’t have a problem with hanging Padilla for treason, provided he gets a trial first, and is convicted by a jury, with competent evidence that he committed treason. Is that too hard for the Bush administration? Apparently so, because the only thing they’ve charged him with is a relatively minor crime.

@43 “Gore tried to pull a fast one and you know it. He didn’t try and recount all the counties.”

And Bush did? There was game playing on both sides. But while we’re on this topic, how about giving credit where credit is due — namely, to Gregoire? Berendt wanted a partial recount; Gregoire said no, recount the entire state, or none of it. It put Berendt in the position of having to raise a great deal more money for the recount deposit, but it was the principled thing to do, and Gregoire chose the difficult, principled path.

As long as we’re talking about pulling fast ones, it’s pretty damned clear that

(a) Katherine Harris committed federal felonies in purging the voter registrations of black voters who were NOT felons, for which she should have been prosecuted and thrown in prison;
(b) The people running the RNC violated a federal court order by being complicit in the Florida black voter purge, for which they should have been held in contempt and thrown in prison;
(c) It is a certainty that Gore would have won Florida (and the election) if 57,700 eligible black voters had not been illegally disenfranchised by GOP crooks like Harris; and
(d) Post-election media analysis showed Gore WOULD have won a recount (contrary to rightwing lies).

Oh, and let’s not forget the staged riot by GOP staffers whom the RNC bused to Florida to interfere with the recount. In Florida, as elsewhere, interfering with election officials and preventing them from doing their work is a prosecutable crime; why weren’t those thugs prosecuted and thrown in prison?

Poor poor Pellethead: No one on the right was/is/or will be convicted of any voting issues and no kicking and screaming from you libtard ASSWipes can do anything about dem fax. Moonbat!s from three states are convicted so far!

The fact Republicans can’t wage a presidential campaign without telling lies about the opposing candidate speaks for itself. The only way a Republican can get elected to anything is by lying about his opponent, lying about his resume, and lying about his own positions. But you can’t fool the public forever! Republicans got their nuts stomped last November, and that’s just the beginning; the next election will finish off the Republican Party.

These libs are something else. After enduring a president for eight years that 60% didnt want in the White house we are suppose to feel bad that Bush got in the White House by breaking even with Gore. Screw off.

“Byron (Low Tax) Looper … is currently an inmate in the Tennessee state penal system. … He was convicted for the October 1998 murder of Tennessee State Senator Tommy Burks while running for his seat.

“Looper attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point for three years, but was given an honorable discharge following a serious knee injury. After his discharge he moved to Georgia … [and] lost a race for the Georgia state House of Representatives …. Following this loss, he took a job as a legislative aide for an uncle …, Max Looper … an active member of the Ku Klux Klan.

“In 1992 Looper returned to Tennessee and became a staunch conservative Republican. He lost a race for the state house in 1994 … in 1996 he legally changed his middle name … to ‘(Low Tax)’ and was backed by the Tennessee Republican Party in a race for … Putnam County Tax Assessor, which he won. He was the first Republican elected official … in Putnam County in over a century.

“As tax assessor, Looper used his office’s equipment to flood state media with a number of bizarre and self-congratulatory press releases, though he failed repeatedly to file property tax valuations with the state government on time. Some charges were made that Looper offered reduced tax assessments to local businesses in exchange for large political contributions …. Later, an ex-girlfriend sued him for child support and fraud, charging he had used his official position to steal her house.

“In March 1998, Looper was indicted on 14 counts of official misconduct, theft of services and official oppression. Looper claimed the charges were politically motivated due to Democratic control of Putnam County politics and the Tennessee General Assembly. This was an expected argument due to Looper’s past obsession with conspiracy theories and allegations of political witch hunts by Putnam County Democrats who were ‘out to get him’ during his tenure as Tax Assessor. The Cookeville Herald-Citizen regularly reported the Republican Tax Assessor’s bizarre antics and public verbal assaults of Putnam County elected officials. The Tennessee Republican Party soon claimed no connection with Looper, though campaign contributions and lists of paid political consultants proved otherwise.

“In 1998, Looper sought the Republican nominations for the 6th Congressional District of Tennessee and the Tennessee State Senate in the same primary. He lost the Congressional nomination to a candidate who was not under indictment, in fact finishing last in a field of four. He won the state senate nomination by default, however, as he was the only Republican candidate on the ballot. This set up his campaign against … incumbent Democratic state senator Tommy Burks. …

“On the morning of October 19, … Tommy Burks’ body was found with his head resting on the steering wheel of his pickup truck. He had been speaking moments earlier with a farmhand, Wesley Rex, about work that needed to be done on the farm. Both men had seen a black car, driven by a man in sunglasses and black gloves, driving by the farm on multiple occasions that morning. The car had later sped by Rex’s truck, allowing Rex to get a view of the driver.

“The Cumberland County authorities immediately began a standard homicide investigation but could find no one with any plausible reason to murder Burks. Then Rex called Burks’ widow, Charlotte, after seeing a picture of Looper on television, and told her that Looper was the man he’d seen speeding away in the black car the morning of the murder.

“Looper … made it to Hot Springs, Arkansas, where he met with a friend, … Joe Bond. … Bond would eventually become a key witness for the prosecution. Looper had stayed with Bond for a while, talking a great deal about how he had murdered his Senate opponent ….

“The trial finally occurred in 2000. By this time, inmate road crews had found the weapon apparently used by Looper to commit the murder. Wes Rex and Joe Bond were both prominent witnesses for the prosecution, as were two political consultants who reported having been contacted at various times by Looper, who told both of them that he wanted to run a political race and felt the surest way to win would be to murder the opponent. … Looper was convicted and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole. …

“An obscure Tennessee state law required that a candidate’s name be removed from the ballot and not replaced if he died within 30 days of the election. Even the Putnam County Election Commission did not know it existed before the Burks murder. Looper’s name therefore was the only one listed on the ballot, and for a few days it looked like he would win by default. This may have been Looper’s intention. …

“To counter Looper’s potential election on a technicality, Burks’ widow, Charlotte, ran a write-in campaign for the seat. … On election day, Charlotte Burks, as a write-in candidate, won the seat with 30,252 votes compared to Looper’s 1,531 votes …. Charlotte Burks remains a popular member of the State Senate. Looper made a court appearance on October 12, 2004 in which he requested a new trial, but the request was denied.

“‘He was the first Republican elected in Putnam County … in recent memory, and he made quite a name for himself ….’ — Looper’s defense attorney, Ken Poston, in his opening statement to the jury”

Roger Rabbit Commentary: Motherbeater Irons, Roadkill McGavick, cigaret smoke, and even Mark Griswold have the satisfaction of knowing they slightly outpolled their fellow Republican, Low Tax Looper, which means there’s an even bigger loser than them out there.

Carol Lam, the former United States attorney for San Diego, is smart and tireless and was very good at her job. Her investigation of Representative Randy Cunningham resulted in a guilty plea for taking more than $2 million in bribes from defense contractors and a sentence of more than eight years. Two weeks ago, she indicted Kyle Dustin Foggo, the former No. 3 official in the C.I.A. The defense-contracting scandal she pursued so vigorously could yet drag in other politicians.

In many Justice Departments, her record would have won her awards, and perhaps a promotion to a top post in Washington. In the Bush Justice Department, it got her fired.

Redneck Rob are you still alive? Do you need some plastic for the bathroom?

Hell, Griswold — running against Frank Chopp — did nearly FOUR TIMES BETTER than Looper (15% vs. 4%), which is quite an accomplishment for someone who publicly stated he hopes terrorist knock down a U.S. airliner so more people will vote Republican. To wit:

“Congratulations Speaker Pelosi, now let the bombs fall where they may. My prediction: terror attack on domestic soil passenger aircraft within the next six months. Casualties in the 2-300 range. And, unfortunately, maybe that’s just what we need. It’s obvious people don’t remember what happened 5 years ago. Posted by FullContactPolitics at November 8, 2006 10:52 AM”

Dan, are you saying that people didn’t like President Reagan? Whey you say eight years, I have to assume you’re including the last four years of his term. George the First only served four years.

Now, President Clinton, on the other hand, did have a short period at the beginning of his Presidency where his popularity dropped to around 40%, but it rebounded quickly, with him ending up with an approval rating in the mid 60 percent range.

Time magazine and Newsweek’s dire warnings in 1974 – of another ice age!

How the global warming scare is cool in Hollywood.
What a leading U.S. expert told the Senate about the “science fiction” of a disappearing Arctic.
Why we could actually be heading for a cooler, and not warmer, period.

Vice President Gore’s “reign of terror” against global warming skeptics.

“The charge of politics certainly feels right. This administration has made partisanship its lodestar. The Washington Post reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran revealed in his book, ‘Imperial Life in the Emerald City,’ that even applicants to help administer post-invasion Iraq were asked whom they voted for in 2000 and what they thought of Roe v. Wade. …

“The politicization of government over the last six years has had tragic consequences — in New Orleans, Iraq and elsewhere. But allowing politics to infect U.S. attorney offices takes it to a whole new level. Congress should continue to pursue the case of the fired U.S. attorneys vigorously, both to find out what really happened and to make sure that it does not happen again.”

Wingnut slimeballs are shameless apologists for the sleaziest administration since Grant’s.

Sorry forgot the NYTimes was subscription. It’s probably because wingnuts are not smart enough to sign up. Keeps the riff raff out.

That’s okay wingnuts like Nambla president Buttpudder needs to go see if they are smarter than a fifth grader to make them feel good about themselves.

Just shows the brainpower of the average Fox viewer.

Here is the whole article.

Sorry for the length, but it just goes to show how evil these fuckers are…but we already new that.

Carol Lam, the former United States attorney for San Diego, is smart and tireless and was very good at her job. Her investigation of Representative Randy Cunningham resulted in a guilty plea for taking more than $2 million in bribes from defense contractors and a sentence of more than eight years. Two weeks ago, she indicted Kyle Dustin Foggo, the former No. 3 official in the C.I.A. The defense-contracting scandal she pursued so vigorously could yet drag in other politicians.

In many Justice Departments, her record would have won her awards, and perhaps a promotion to a top post in Washington. In the Bush Justice Department, it got her fired.

Ms. Lam is one of at least seven United States attorneys fired recently under questionable circumstances. The Justice Department is claiming that Ms. Lam and other well-regarded prosecutors like John McKay of Seattle, David Iglesias of New Mexico, Daniel Bogden of Nevada and Paul Charlton of Arizona — who all received strong job evaluations — performed inadequately.

It is hard to call what’s happening anything other than a political purge. And it’s another shameful example of how in the Bush administration, everything — from rebuilding a hurricane-ravaged city to allocating homeland security dollars to invading Iraq — is sacrificed to partisan politics and winning elections.

U.S. attorneys have enormous power. Their decision to investigate or indict can bankrupt a business or destroy a life. They must be, and long have been, insulated from political pressures. Although appointed by the president, once in office they are almost never asked to leave until a new president is elected. The Congressional Research Service has confirmed how unprecedented these firings are. It found that of 486 U.S. attorneys confirmed since 1981, perhaps no more than three were forced out in similar ways — three in 25 years, compared with seven in recent months.

It is not just the large numbers. The firing of H. E. Cummins III is raising as many questions as Ms. Lam’s. Mr. Cummins, one of the most distinguished lawyers in Arkansas, is respected by Republicans and Democrats alike. But he was forced out to make room for J. Timothy Griffin, a former Karl Rove deputy with thin legal experience who did opposition research for the Republican National Committee. (Mr. Griffin recently bowed to the inevitable and said he will not try for a permanent appointment. But he remains in office indefinitely.)

The Bush administration cleared the way for these personnel changes by slipping a little-noticed provision into the Patriot Act last year that allows the president to appoint interim U.S. attorneys for an indefinite period without Senate confirmation.

Three theories are emerging for why these well-qualified U.S. attorney were fired — all political, and all disturbing.

1. Helping friends. Ms. Lam had already put one powerful Republican congressman in jail and was investigating other powerful politicians. The Justice Department, unpersuasively, claims that it was unhappy about Ms. Lam’s failure to bring more immigration cases. Meanwhile, Ms. Lam has been replaced with an interim prosecutor whose résumé shows almost no criminal law experience, but includes her membership in the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group.

2. Candidate recruitment. U.S. attorney is a position that can make headlines and launch political careers. Congressional Democrats suspect that the Bush administration has been pushing out long-serving U.S. attorneys to replace them with promising Republican lawyers who can then be run for Congress and top state offices.

3. Presidential politics. The Justice Department concedes that Mr. Cummins was doing a good job in Little Rock. An obvious question is whether the administration was more interested in his successor’s skills in opposition political research — let’s not forget that Arkansas has been lucrative fodder for Republicans in the past — in time for the 2008 elections.

The charge of politics certainly feels right. This administration has made partisanship its lodestar. The Washington Post reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran revealed in his book, “Imperial Life in the Emerald City,” that even applicants to help administer post-invasion Iraq were asked whom they voted for in 2000 and what they thought of Roe v. Wade.

Congress has been admirably aggressive about investigating. Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, held a tough hearing. And he is now talking about calling on the fired U.S. attorneys to testify and subpoenaing their performance evaluations — both good ideas.

The politicization of government over the last six years has had tragic consequences — in New Orleans, Iraq and elsewhere. But allowing politics to infect U.S. attorney offices takes it to a whole new level. Congress should continue to pursue the case of the fired U.S. attorneys vigorously, both to find out what really happened and to make sure that it does not happen again.

Furball if HillBilly Clinton is so good, why has Hilary told all other Moonbat! candidates don’t talk about Bill? Yes I posted that last week too but that single cell organizm called your brain could not process truths!

You realize, Puddybud, that this thread was started by Will, and Goldy hasn’t posted anything on it. I doubt that he has even seen your post.

As to your other post asking why Ms. Clinton doesn’t want the discussion to focus on her husband, well, gee, Puddybud. Could it possibly be that she wants to run on her own merits?

Or perhaps it’s because she wants to talk about her candidacy, her views and her opinions.

Or maybe it’s because she knows that if the discussion is about her husband, some wingnut is going to try and distract everyone with dress stain jokes, because they don’t have any issues to run on, and their own records are so abysmal that if anyone actually looks at the Republican candidate’s records, they’ll be sure to vote Democratic no matter who we nominate.

Let’s face it. Of the candidates so far, you folks have one reasonably honest, consistent candidate.

So, nominate Ron Paul, and we’ll talk. (Yes, he’s far-right, and I disagree with most of his positions on issues, but the more I hear of him, the better I like the guy. He’s conservative, he’s honest, and because of that, the Republican Party leadership hates him with a passion.) The rest of your possibilities so far are a bunch of losers.

At least with him, the country could have a choice between two honest candidates that simply had a different vision for our future.

And as for Mr. Gingrich, my only request is that you somehow convince Rev. Ridiculous Robertson to be his running mate.

… [and] lost a race for the Georgia state House of Representatives Following this loss, he took a job as a legislative aide for an uncle …, Max Looper … an active member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Actual full paragraph from original source:

“In 1987 he lost a race for the Georgia state House of Representatives as a Democrat. Following this loss, he took a job as a legislative aide for an uncle and fellow Democrat, Max Looper. The Georgia Democratic Party admitted that Max Looper was an active member of the Ku Klux Klan.”

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron_Looper

GEE — BYRON LOW TAX LOOPER AND HIS UNCLE MAX LOOPER WERE BOTH DEMOCRATS! AND UNCLE MAX WAS A PROUD MEMBER OF THAT DEMOCRAT FRATERNITY, KU KLUX KLAN.

George Bush received five more votes than Al Gore in 2000: 271-266. Those are the only votes that are technically cast to elect the President and Vice-President. And the only votes that legally matter (unless the election is thrown into the House of Representatives).

So what is wrong with a President firing a U.S. Attorney on a political whim? They all serve at the pleasure of the President, just like cabinet officers and other officials. Every time there is a change of party in the Presidency, every single one of them gets fired.

Most of the seven U.S. Attorneys recently forced to resign by the Bush administration were appointed back in 2001 when Bush took office. Had John Kerry been elected back in 2004, you can bet that Kerry would have fired or forced all seven of these people to resign in January 2005, when he was sworn into office.

I fail to see the scandal in Bush firing 7 U.S. Attorneys, when no one would have raised an eyebrow had Kerry fired all 100 or so of them everywhere throughout the country.

Two, it’s Ol’ Scratchy Voice who “claimed” to be a Philly boy only to later learn he’s from the ‘burbs, probably like you are.

Three Hilary uses Bill when it’s convenient. Run on her own merits? Why was BillyBob stumping for her in 2006 if she was running on her OWN MERITS? If you READ the article you’d realized this was from other libtards commenting on it. I posted from the libtard MSM John.

Good night John. I am so glad you read what other libtards write and print in the press.

Florida Voting Machines worked perfectly
Cuyahoga County Ohio run by Moonbat!s
If used as a noun
Voting Fraud by Moonbat!s in three states convicted
Now Low Tax Looper a Moonbat!
Gore LOST Tennessee
Gore admitted he screwed his pooch in Florida on recount

Glad Clueless woke up on Wa Times. If Clueless remembered the libtard MSM didn’t carry the link to ol’ hyphen-name the child porn watcher until after it was in the Moonie Times first. Why is that Clueless? The Libtard MSM won’t carry bad things about their buds unless it’s already exposed by others?

“So what is wrong with a President firing a U.S. Attorney on a political whim? They all serve at the pleasure of the President, just like cabinet officers and other officials. Every time there is a change of party in the Presidency, every single one of them gets fired.”

Yes, although it is very unusual to fire one mid-term except for misconduct. Still, the President certainly has the power to fire them.

Actually, the problem we have with this issue is that the White House managed to slip a change to the rules about appointing U.S. Attornies into the latest iteration of the Patriot Act. It was a small change inserted in the conference committee. Two short paragraphs hidden in 277 pages of text. A number of Republicans have stated that they didn’t even know about it.

SEC. 502. INTERIM APPOINTMENT OF UNITED STATES ATTORNEYS.
Section 546 of title 28, United States Code, is amended by striking subsections (c ) and (d) and inserting the following new subsection:

”(c ) A person appointed as United States attorney under this section may serve until the qualification of a United States Attorney for such district appointed by the President under section 541 of this title.”.

In the past, interim appointments were for a maximum of 120 days. After that, if the Senate had not confirmed the appointee, the courts got to choose for the rest of the term. The courts could reappoint the President’s choice, or pick someone else.

Fast forward to now. Interim appointees can now hold their positions indefinitely without Senate confirmation. The President can now make “interim appointments” that are valid through the rest of his term.

Yes, he originally registered as a Democrat, but Democrats refused to elect him. Perhaps it was because he was a crooked racist thug, or maybe we just didn’t like his smile.

So, he found a party where he fit in. He finally won election (with the full backing of the Republican Party) as Putnam County Tax Assessor, whereupon he proceeded to get himself indicted for 14 counts of official misconduct, theft of services and official oppression.

He then became the Republican candidate for the Georgia State Senate in 1998, and, as many Republicans do, decided that this was far too important to leave up to the voters. Since paperless Diebold voting machines were not available, he found a much simpler way of turning the vote in his direction.

He murdered the Democrat, Tommy Burks, who was the incumbent.

As this seemed a bit drastic even to the Republican Party (at least for such a local race) they distanced themselves from him, and to their credit, some Republicans even worked to help Mr. Burks’ widow to wage a successful write-in campaign.

So, bad person doesn’t fit in with the Democrats, so he becomes a Republican. He is elected, then indicted, then becomes the Republican candidate for State Senate, then murders his opponent in order to steal the race.

Oh, and he is apparently still maintaining that the charges against him were politically motivated. The idea that it might simply be unacceptable to murder someone has not yet occurred to him.

We chucked him out, you took him in, then he was able to do his thing. He’s all yours.

Of all the terrifically bad ideas implemented by the Bush administration since 9/11, probably the worst have involved torture. The decision to sideline criminal prosecutions and instead focus on “alternative interrogation” methods was wrongheaded from the get-go. It was wrongheaded as a tactical matter, wrongheaded as a legal matter, wrongheaded as an ethical matter, and wrongheaded as a matter of undermining world opinion. In fact the only thing the Bush administration has actually gotten right about torture is this one tiny truth: If you want to destroy someone—if that is your sole objective—torture works. So, why won’t the government even take credit for that?

That’s why it’s worth keeping an eye on the proceedings this week in Miami as federal Judge Marcia Cooke tries to determine whether the alleged “dirty bomber”—scratch that—alleged “apartment bomber”—um, scratch that—alleged terror conspirator Jose Padilla is mentally fit to stand trial. What the prosecution now claims almost defies credulity. They contend that Padilla is wholly unharmed—after spending 1,307 days in a 9-foot-by-7-foot cell in a Navy brig in South Carolina, where he says he was, among other things, deprived of sleep, light, sight, sound, shackled in stress positions, injected with “truth serum,” and isolated for extended stretches of time. It’s better than that. According to the government, Padilla is faking his craziness.

I agree with Puffybutt. Life is about choices. When Bush decided to snort coke, go AWOL, and get in bed with the bin Laden family, he decided to make a choice that includes fucking over America. I see that Puffybutt supports fucking over America by supporting the cowardly pretend president.

Mr. Stuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuupid: Good name choice. Two words anyone can decipher! Can you create a worthwhile URL search Mr Stuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuupid? What was my take on Bob Ney? Careful now, I know this may take a while. That syphillis laden single cell organizm AKA your brain needs extra time to process fax!

Wife? Again you refer to your Rosy Palm and her five helpers? Are you left or right handed? Which hand has more blisters Mr. Stuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuupid?

Byron (Low Tax) Looper was NEVER elected as a Republican. And when he was nominated by default as an unopposed GOP candidate for Tennessee State Senate in August 1998, less than 17% of voters in the uncontested GOP primary actually marked their ballots for him.

The Wikipedia article is incorrect about the “tax assessor” position in Putnam County, Tennessee being non-partisan.

All county offices in Tennessee are partisan, including the “Assessor of Property”. The general election for county offices in Tennessee is held in August of even-numbered years, at the same time as the primary for state offices.

Independent candidates are quite common for county offices in Tennessee, and many of them win. County parties in Tennessee are not required to hold primaries, and often nominate for county offices simply by holding a convention. Sometimes, a county party won’t even nominate anybody or even set up a process by which a candidate could get its nomination for county offices. And yes, sometimes neither party will nominate anyone for any county office, and every single county candidate in the August county general election will be an independent.

As far as I can tell, Byron Looper ran for Putnam County Assessor of Property in August 1996 and was elected as an Independent. The Republican Party did not nominate anyone for this office. Republicans rarely run for county office in Putnam County, because the county is more than 3-1 Democrat.

He did get the GOP nomination for State Senate District 15 by default in the August 1998 primary, since nobody else filed as a Republican. For state offices, parties in Tennessee have to hold primaries and cannot exclude any candidate. If some asshole claims affiliation with your party, and is the only person running, then they get your nomination. This was the case with Byron (Low Tax) Looper in 1998.

In Tennessee, it is okay to run for two offices at once! Looper also sought the GOP nomination for U.S. Congress in August 1998 for the 6th district. Looper was badly defeated in this endeavor. In Putnam County, Looper received only 219 votes out of 2,444 cast in the GOP primary, or 8.96% support among GOP voters. (There were 5,684 votes cast in the uncontested Democrat primary for Congress in Putnam County.)

Looper also appeared on the Putnam County ballot for State Senate District 15 in the August 1998 GOP primary. Had there been any other GOP candidates, Looper would have been easily defeated. Looper received 444 votes in Putnam County, with 180 write-ins. The overwhelming majority of Republicans left their ballots blank in this contest.

Compare this to the number of GOP votes cast in other Putnam County primary contests in August 1998:

Looper may have been the GOP nominee by default for State Senate in 1998, but he was overwhelmingly rejected even by Republicans — less than 9% support when other candidates were on the ballot and less than 17% support when he was the only candidate on the ballot.

@93 Richard, if you think it’s okay to politicize U.S. Attorneys, then you’ll have no objection when Congress (a political body) investigates the political firings of U.S. Attorneys — right? If Republicans can politicize their office, why can’t Democrats politicize their firings?

@91 Yeah, we used to have some nasty Democrats down south, but those KKK fuckers are all Republicans now — you guys own them! After we made our party inhospitable to them, Republicans welcomed them with open arms. Doesn’t say much for the GOP that you welcome the Democrats’ rejects, does it?

While I may argue with your position that Mr. Looper did not receive the backing of the Republican party in his election for Assessor, of course got the nomination for State Senator by default, (although he did apparently receive support from some prominent local Republicans) nobody here (except maybe RightEqualsStupid) really believes that he truly represents the Republican party, and a number of Republicans worked to help Ms. Burks win her write-in campaign.

He’s just fun to trot out to tweak the noses of Republicans, a hobby that many here have and I freely admit to succumbing to the temptation myself from time to time.

More serious matters. That little stunt with the two small paragraphs inserted into the Patriot Act that let the President bypass Congress in appointing U.S. Attorneys. While the article I linked to, http://uspolitics.about.com/b/a/207986.htm , is a bit one-sided in tone, it seems to have the basic facts right.

One of the reasons I dislike the very concept of bills that are hundreds of pages long is that this kind of stunt can be pulled. Apparently there isn’t even a record of which lawmaker inserted this little “gem”, as it was in neither version of the bill going into conference.

But the White House certainly knew about it and wasted no time in making use of of it. That’s why the firings have drawn so much attention. It looks like the White House managed to slip something into a bill, then use the new authority to remove folks that didn’t totally toe the mark for them.

The checks and balances are there for a reason. Hopefully, Congress will rectify this by changing it back, inserting the change (openly, where everyone can see what they’re doing) into something veto-proof. I’m not crazy about that kind of bundling, but considering how the initial change was made, I don’t see much of an option.

Then the new appointees can go through the proper screening, and the President will have to go back to getting the “advice and consent of the Senate”.

Yes, he can fire whomever he wants, but there is a risk if he does so without good cause.

Oh, and for those that seem to think that whatever happens to Mr. Padilla is just ducky.

Personally, I have no sympathy for the man. Even he does not claim to be innocent of the charges, so locking him away in a hole where they have to pump in daylight seems a pretty good idea after he is tried and convicted in a court of law.

Constitutional rights apply, even to people accused of treason.

Here is the worst part. While I’m no lawyer, it seems quite possible to me that Mr. Padilla may eventually be released because his Constitutional rights were violated. The abuse he received may actually work in his favor, and he may end up a free man, because of a misguided attempt to punish him. The Administration set up circumstances where the courts are given a choice between allowing flagrant violations of the Constitution or letting Mr. Padilla go free.

Then, of course, we’ll hear screams from the right about how judges are abusing their authority and preventing justice from being served.

Johnboy when will you stop pretending to be a Democrat? I mean really, the gig is up. Just admit that you suck Publican dick and be done with it. You have no credibility with real Dems. You’re actually more harmful to freedom than the Puffybutt’s of the world. You’re a danger to freedom. All my friends who buy Gig Harbor area real estate think so too.

“Doesn’t say much for the GOP that you welcome the Democrats’ rejects, does it?”

Now, Roger, that’s not entirely fair. We’ve welcomed a number of Republican rejects as well. Here are a few examples:

Senator James Webb (D – Virginia)
Congressman Tim Mahoney (D – Florida)
Congresswoman Christine Jennings (D – Florida)
Kansas Attorney General Paul Morrison (D).
And a large number of other former Republicans that believe in smaller government, balanced budgets and generally keeping out of other people’s personal lives now grace our ranks.

You Republicans go right ahead and continue sending all those terrible “RINOs” over to us, and if we find anyone else like Mr. Looper in our ranks, well, we’ll point him in your direction.

Don’t bother to thank us. It’s our pleasure.

Oh, and Mr. Stupid? I wonder if you realize that you and Puddybud sound very much alike. Call me whatever name you wish, but I actually work to get Democrats elected, spending hours on phone banks, donating money, time and resources. Of course, I doubt that you like most of the Democrats I work with, but that’s fine with me.

@81 DanW
“The politicization of government over the last six years has had tragic consequences — in New Orleans, Iraq and elsewhere. But allowing politics to infect U.S. attorney offices takes it to a whole new level. Congress should continue to pursue the case of the fired U.S. attorneys vigorously, both to find out what really happened and to make sure that it does not happen again.’

Clinton and Reno fired all 97 US attorneys as soon as they took office……

As mentioned in several earlier posts, the big complaint here is not that the U.S. Attorneys were fired. We all agree that they serve at the pleasure of the President.

The complaint is that they were fired immediately after the White House got a change to the requirement for Senate Confirmation snuck into a 277 page bill in conference committee.

President Clinton had to get Senate confirmation for all of his appointees. They had to be screened by the Senate, and if he fired someone, he either nominated a replacement that would be acceptable to the Senate, or risked having the court appoint a replacement.

This requirement to get the “Advice and Consent of the Senate” is designed to reduce the temptation to fire someone for reasons other than misconduct, and to give public scrutiny to the new candidate.

Seems rather odd that Mr. Bush did not choose to replace these people until immediately after removing that requirement.

The best Reubens in this fine land are either at Jack Cooper’s Celebrity Deli in Menlo Park, New Jersey; or Mollie’s of Hot Springs, Arkansas, the only Jewish deli in Arkansas, where waitresses ask things like ” Y’all want the matzoh ball soup?”.
Locally, nobody beats the meat of Roxy’s Deli in Fremont.

Hi John
I see this as a problem as well. Bills that start out 7 pages long, with specific issues, becoming hundreds of pages with plenty of earmarks and add-ons in them.
This is a non partisan issue that is a problem for all Americans.

I do believe that there needs to be adise and consent function with appointees and do not agree with this language. However, This law was passed in March and the resignations were asked for in December. So I don’t see any issue with the timing.

If there were real issues with getting thru appointments, why not slam them thru before the election?
I don’t believe the Dems wouild have filibustered the appointments.

Yes when ever a new administration comes in they generally fire them all. (try reading the article)
These were already Bushie appointees,(who knew he knew people who actually had a conscience, these must have been the good republicans that use to exist) and since they were doing their job in going after criminals like Duke Cunnigham, and a few more GOP supporting crooks or not making up false charges right before an election they got fired. (Then look at the qualifications of the replacements)
What is wrong with you?
Do you think that holding onto power by any means versus offering what Americans want is what your government should be all about?

You continue to blindly defend these guys for all their attrocities while telling me that Clinton was awful because he got a blowjob. And you don’t even know why you trash Hillary..You just do.

You are truly a traitor to what America use to stand for.
You should join Rob the redneck on his bathroom floor.

“You are truly a traitor to what America use to stand for.
You should join Rob the redneck on his bathroom floor. ”

Nice tolerance. You are the one who looks to silence those who do not think just like you do.

My pointing out the firings of the Clinton admin is not a defacto support for President Bush. Rather, it is a statement that it is politics and goes both ways.
Frankly, The R’s and the D’s have very little difference when it comes to governance. The machine is too big, and abuses take place no matter who is in the whitehouse..

Headline: Tokyo experienced the first winter without snowfall on record since 1876, the Japan Meteorological Agency said Thursday.

Dan Rather then posts @ 46 :

“Now only if you could explain global warming in 1876…God you lefties are dumbassess. heehehehe ”

Uh Dan, there was snow and freezing temps in 1876. The ’since 1876′ denotes that that was when data collection began. This year was the first for Tokyo in recorded history. Don’t feel bad Dan,..you’ve posted dumber things in the past.

I think that one reason for the delay is that it would simply have been too raw, even for the Republicans in Congress, for Mr. Bush to have pulled this stunt earlier. A number of them have indicated that they didn’t know about the change. Now he can claim that all the clamor is just partisanship.

I strongly agree that the process that takes a seven-page bill and turns it into a 277 page bill has gotten out of hand. Unfortunately, with the actual give-and-take of politics, and given the fact that both parties tend to be guilty of this, I see little chance of it changing.

Even on this issue. In order to have the chance to undo this change in the law, the new change will likely have to be attached to something effectively veto-proof. (Somehow, I cannot see Mr. Bush signing a bill limiting his authority unless he has no choice.) Other things that various members of Congress feel are important will also likely be attached to such “veto-proof” bills.

I enjoyed your treatise re: activist judges at 39. But this thread is pretty long now, so I doubt my added comments will be seen by many.

I would add that the label “activist judges” is usually applied when a judge applies existing laws to change accepted customs. This creates a bit of an uproar when it turns out that accepted practices have long been a violation of existing law. Opponants of any change, at that point, brand the judge an “activist judge”.

By way of example, around 1978 Tennesse enacted a privacy law for public school records. Since then, it has become a national law. But in 1978, when the law was enacted, there was some discussion that it would prevent recognition of academic honors because it would identify which students had higher grades and which students did not, by process of exclusion. The general consensus in legal circles was that the law did indeed have that affect, but it was widely ignored since nobody was complaining. The schools and Universities continued to issue a Dean’s List, Phi Betta Kappa continued to induct members, and diplomas included “with honors”, “with high honors”, etc. to designate those graduating with the higher grade point averages. That is, until somebody complained, and a lot of conservative commentators made fun of the Tennessee court decision which simply set forth what everybody else who had looked at the issue already knew: that the Tennessee legistlature had written a law which had consequences they hadn’t considered, and they neglected to change the law even when the consequences were spelled out to them.

But the conservatives wanted someone to demonize, and the judges were labeled “activist judges” who were trying to advance some sort of “non-judgemental liberal philosophy” upon Tennesse students. But what did they really want – a judge which was going to ignore the plain language of the law to validate existing practice, as if the law didn’t exist? Isn’t it a primary rule of statutory construction that a law is presumed to be enacted to create a change in the existing status quo?

So what the critics of the judicial opinion was saying was that (a) they really wanted a political issue, and not to consider the case on the merits, and (b) they really do want an activist court, but one which is on THEIR side, not on the other side.

So when Republicans say they favor “Strict Constructionists”, they are really saying they want a judge which will freeze society and law as it stood in, say, 1950. Or 1928, for that matter. Or perhaps 1860.

“Well we are calling your parents after months of your BS on this blog.”

don’t recall seeing you Danw. Who else do you post as?

“I am not tolerant of people who when all the evidence is put before them, still support this criminal assault on Americans.”

I understand that you are of a radical left political bent, but there is no “criminal assault” on Americans going on anywhere but in your head and the daily KOS echo chamber….

Did Pres Bush fire all the US Attorneys when he took office? I’m curious becuase I can’t find any article regarding this….He could have, and then you’d be correct about the SOP for new adminstations. I just can’t find it. As to the article? Well to say that the tone is partisan is a massive understatement. All the attorneys, as pointed out previously serve at the pleasure of the president.

Look. the parties do things we don’t like. Partisan hirings and firings happen.
Do you remember all the pardons Clinton made practically minutes before leaving office? All legal, but partisan, and not available for public debate.

{The important thing is that this is fiction, and not suggesting anyone actually do these things.]

“She just wanted to see what would happen. Some day, she figured, they were going to do something horrible and over the top — drop a nuke on someone, or start mass arrests, or maybe just that the war would become intolerable to enough people that such an action would be supported. Then this could come in handy, this little technique, and if it were replicated all over the country, it would cost the system billions and billions of dollars each day.

For now, she just wanted to test her hypothesis.

The highway department’s facility was near the main post office. There was gravel and cinders and heavy equipment and a couple of large storage sheds; and there were caution signs and traffic cones. It was fenced in with a 12-foot chain-link fence (and double barbed wire outriggers atop). But she’d walked around the facility and discovered that there was no fence on the side facing into the woods. If there hadn’t been, she’d have purchased a bolt-cutter to snip-snip-snip a passageway through the fence itself. A good bolt-cutter will go through chain-link like a warm knife through the butter. If she’d had collaborators, she might have posted them with cell phones both ways up the road for early warning, but she went in this time on chutzpah and toted out the cones through the woods to a place alongside the road almost a quarter mile away; it took her two hours.

Her map reconnaissance had shown that there were five main arteries that led commuters into the city. She had timed the van drive from point to point in places along the arteries where she had good access from a parking point off the artery itself. She had “liberated” 20 traffic cones from the highway department; and five caution signs. At each point, she set out four cones when there was no one on the road. It was 2 AM when she started and 4:20 when she finished.

The cones were placed in a long diagonal that slowly shifted traffic to the right lane and partly onto the shoulder of the highway. If she’d have been operating with teams, the whole thing could have been done in 15 minutes, simultaneously. But she was just testing.

She then put each caution sign 200 meters or so in advance of the first cone, to get the drivers to slow down. She wasn’t interested in hurting anyone, just plugging up the roads at rush hour. If this worked, she thought, then imagine what would happen if this happened in ten big cities, or 20. What if 1,000 activists added their own bodies to the roadblocks and sealed the cities completely. The trick was having enough public support so that people gave a shit.

But she had to try it… just to see how it worked. So here she sat, at 7:30 AM now, in a parking lot with her coffee, overwatching the highway.”

Thank you so much for answering my questions. I really appreciate the time you’ve taken to give me insightful and thought provoking answers. Each time I read one of your replies not only do I come away with a better understanding of my original question, I also get even more information to digest and expand upon.

On the subjects of “strict constructionism” and “activist judges” I’m not sure where on the “sliding scale” I would fall. Or, if my views are so contradictory that I don’t even know enough to recognize my own naiveté.

For instance, I’ve always been a firm believer that the Constitution is, for lack of a better label, a living, breathing document. And, having just reread the Constitution several times over recently, it is absolutely impossible to interpret the Constitution literally to its word. Nor, do I believe conservatives really want to go down that path, either. To me there’s no debate on this subject and here are my examples taken from Art. III and the Bill of Rights:

Art. III, Section 3:
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

The last sentence is clearly the reason why Treason is RARELY ever prosecuted. There is no wiggle room or various interpretations allowed for “. . . Testimony of two Witnesses to the same over Act, . . .”

2nd Amendment:
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

To me, the passage “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” needs no interpretation; take it at its word. However, I could make the argument that a well regulated Militia pertains to what we now know as the state’s National Guard and therefore gun ownership doesn’t extend to the private citizen who isn’t apart of a “well regulated Militia . . . necessary to the security of a free State.” Strict interpretation means you’d better be in a “well regulated Militia” if you own a gun. Period. This is why I don’t think the wing nuts want strict interpretation of the Constitution.

4th Amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

I defy anyone to strictly interpret “unreasonable searches and seizures.

By nature and definition the 4th Amendment invokes the necessity of interpretation. So there are two pretty clear examples of how strict interpretation could work, but another showing where it cannot work. More importantly, though, our Founding Fathers did not entertain the idea of breaking away from the Crown without vigorous debate, they certainly didn’t draft the Declaration of Independence without debate, and they sure as Hell didn’t draft the Constitution or it’s Amendments without copious amounts of debate lasting for years and years.

There is some language in the Constitution that can, and should be, interpreted narrowly. But in other sections, the language is too broad and at times ambiguous to interpret literally.

So what does this all mean? To me, it means that our Founding Fathers emerged form the Age of Enlightenment where logic and reasoned, passionate debate ruled the day and what they really taught us was not “what to think, but how to think. They were, in my opinion, modern day philosophers no different that Aristotle or Socrates. They gave us the rules and framework of how to conduct honest debate in government, the tools if you will, to solve any and all problems for their/our collective posterity.

I firmly believe that judges should interpret the Law and legal precedents and apply them to an individual case, but where Law or precedent doesn’t exist . . . hmmmmmm . . . well, I guess that’s how we got to Marbury v. Madison, isn’t it?. You know what, Roger Rabbit? I just came to the conclusion that I don’t know enough about how Judges can create law in the first place, and how much latitude is too much legislative power for the judiciary. I’d like to believe that all legislative making power resides in Congress, but that’s clearly not the case. I’ll have to investigate this issue further.

Oh, and Mr. Stupid? I wonder if you realize that you and Puddybud sound very much alike. Call me whatever name you wish, but I actually work to get Democrats elected, spending hours on phone banks, donating money, time and resources. Of course, I doubt that you like most of the Democrats I work with, but that’s fine with me.

03/01/2007 at 9:12 am

John, you are smoking crack. I gave you the things I am passionate about. I proved the reasons why I have those topics. Mr Stupid is Mr Stupid. Johnny boy, Don’t ever equate me with Mr Stupid. He writes how he has sex with other people’s family members. He used to be Left Turn, AKA Left Turdball!

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